


For Better or For Worse (The Private Vows Remix)

by pocky_slash



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Anonymous Sex, Bathroom Sex, Canon Disabled Character, Confessions, Established Relationship, M/M, Relationship Discussions, Roleplay, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 09:53:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2105277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/pseuds/pocky_slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles takes a break from the unreasonable heat of the garden filled with wedding guests in order to cool off in the bathroom. Of all the things he expected to find inside, he can't say a panicking groom was necessarily on the list, but he can roll with the punches.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Better or For Worse (The Private Vows Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ikeracity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ikeracity/gifts).
  * Inspired by [To Have and To Hold](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1840588) by [ikeracity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ikeracity/pseuds/ikeracity). 



> Thanks to everyone who offered to write the middle bits on Twitter! Next time ;)

It's oppressively hot outside. Just really, disgustingly, suffocatingly hot.

Visually, the day is perfect--the sky is blue, the green grass is bright and swaying in the (fleeting) breeze, and the weeping willows frame the wedding arch and justice's dais perfectly. The day is going to look phenomenal in photographs. That is, however, little comfort to him right now as he wilts in his suit.

"An outdoor wedding in July, whose brilliant idea was that?" he mutters, and next to him, Raven snorts. "I'm going to nip back inside and splash some water on my face."

" _Charles_ ," Raven says sharply, but he waves her off.

"I'll just be a moment," he says. "No one will even miss me."

He directs his wheelchair away before she can protest, up the wide concrete path lined with luminaries and flowers and back into the inn. He's infinitely glad he's in the motorized chair. Moving as little as possible seems to be the trick to getting out of this afternoon without completely sweating through his clothes. He actually groans when the air conditioning hits him, sharp and frosty, like he's stepped onto an entirely different planet. He sits for a moment to relish the temperature change and then makes his way back to the restroom tucked back by the ballroom.

(And thank god the dinner and dancing is going to be inside. He doesn't know that he could bear an afternoon of chatting and smiling with that sun beating down on him in the long expanse of time before the sun sets.)

He can hear the hurried slap of shoes against expensive tile before he even opens the door and pauses just outside of it, first to allow a clear path for someone making a hasty exit, and then to telepathically assess the situation once it becomes clear the occupant isn't rushing to exit, but rather pacing. Anxiety is pouring off of the mind on the other side of the door as Charles pushes it open. There's a man standing in front of the bathroom mirror, tugging on his own hair.

"Pull yourself together, Erik," he mutters to himself as Charles rolls inside.

"Is everything alright?" Charles asks.

"Is everything alright?" the man tugging on his hair in front of the mirror asks. "No, everything is not alright. Everything's a disaster. My life is a disaster."

"Is that so?" Charles asks. "Is there anything I can do to help you with that?"

"I just need to not think," Erik murmurs, somewhat desperately. "I need to--I don't know what I need."

Charles eyes him for a moment, flushed and wild around the eyes. His hair is in a disarray and he was once wearing a nicely pressed suit that's now rumbled and sans tie. He looks like a man who needs a distraction. An incredibly gorgeous man who needs a distraction.

"Well," Charles says, "how do you feel about anonymous bathroom sex?"

There's a split second when their eyes meet in the mirror, and then suddenly Erik has whirled around and climbed into Charles' lap in order to best kiss him breathless.

Or maybe climb inside of him. It's hard to tell.

As if that doesn't answer the question well enough, Erik pulls back long enough to gasp, "Yes, fuck, _yes_."

Erik rearranges himself on Charles' lap without breaking their kiss, which is quite a feat given the construction of the motorized chair. Not that Charles feels the need to interrupt the proceedings to share that fact. Instead, he closes his eyes and tilts his head back to allow Erik access to this throat, which he moves slowly towards as he kisses the corner of Charles' mouth, then his jaw and finally his neck. His fingers make quick work of Charles' tie and the buttons of his shirt. 

The mouth and hands and body pressing against him are distracting, but he keeps enough sense of awareness to murmur, "Let's not ruin what I'm sure is a very expensive suit by throwing it on the bathroom floor, hm?"

He earns a bite for his trouble, but far enough under his his collar that he can't complain. He can't do more than gasp, really, and make a vague noise of approval when Erik's jacket and a tie and shirt make their way to the bathroom counter, followed by Charles' as well.

It's not easy to maneuver in the chair under the best of circumstances. In a bathroom barely bigger than a closet in the haste of the moment and with the clock ticking, Charles is rather sure that the whole thing is going to end with Erik on the floor with a concussion, but somehow, they persevere. Charles can't say he's entirely sure how it even happens--Erik's limbs seems to be everywhere as he clings to Charles and sheds the rest of his clothes simultaneously, all the while treating Charles to long, wet kisses, thorough and hot for all their haste. Erik's mouth moves slowly against his own, even as his hands are everywhere, caressing every bit of Charles' skin they can touch. Charles is dizzy from the kisses, dizzy, too, from the arousal and from Erik's breath against him, from the sounds they're making at the way they echo in the small confines of the bathroom.

He's never had sex in public before. Not before the accident in the halcyon days of his misspent youth, and certainly not since, when some of the spontaneity has regrettably faded from his sex life. He's going to have to do it more often--he's not hard and he doubts he'll get that far, but he can easily ride Erik's orgasm to a satisfactory conclusion for himself, especially with how keyed up his body already is. Erik's questing fingers keep rubbing his nipples and it's nearly enough to send him over already, especially paired with those heady kisses and the feeling of Erik's cock in his hand once Charles finally wraps his fingers around it.

" _Shit_ ," Erik hisses, the first thing he's said since they started, ripped fervently from his throat as he tears his mouth away from Charles'. He gasps again as Charles starts stroking and then presses his face into the crook of Charles' neck, panting wetly against the oversensitive skin there as Charles squeezes and rubs up and down his cock, then goes back to stroking, sharp and quick to match the pace of their encounter so far.

He wishes he could drag it out. Erik is gorgeous--all sharp angles and flushed skin--and something about that body pressed up against him in this ridiculous setting goes right past absurd and into erotic. This is a memory he's going to hang on to for a long time (metaphorically--he has an eidetic memory, a side-effect of his telepathy), especially with the soundtrack echoing around them, the chorus of Erik's almost pained whimpers and Charles' harsh breathing and quiet encouragements. Erik sounds cracked open and desperate, like he's going to fall to pieces, like _Charles_ is going to make him fall to pieces, like Charles is powerful enough to reduce him to this, and that thought overwhelms him at the same time as Erik's orgasm.

He manages to keep Erik's semen off of his own pants, which remain on, through some half-delirious instinct, even as he follows Erik's drop into euphoria and blisses out for a few seconds himself, shaking with the aftereffects of someone else's orgasm.

Erik's head is still flopped over on Charles' shoulder once he comes back to himself. He manages to dig some tissues out of his pocket and clean up the mess of come on Erik's abdomen, though he can't do anything about the sheen of sweat covering both of them, nor the vague scent of sex that lingers in the air, even beyond the strong odor of bleach and the metallic cinnamon of the automatic air freshener bolted to the wall. He manages to toss the tissues away, just as Erik raises his head and looks up at him, blinking blearily through a haze.

"Well," Charles says. "That was something."

Erik sighs and rests his head in the crook of Charles' neck, panting. He fits mostly on Charles' lap, still, which is a impressive for someone that tall, and he's stroking Charles' chest as he catches his breath.

"Should I--did you--" he asks lazily, rubbing at one of Charles' nipples. Charles shivers, but shakes his head.

"I'm fine," he says. "How are you? Is your life still a disaster?"

He feels Erik's eyelashes flutter against his neck.

"No," he admits. "it wasn't--" 

"Is that what you needed?" Charles asks. Not that he's judging--frantic anonymous sex in a bathroom is better than puking or getting cold feet, after all. Well, faux-anonymous. Fauxnonymous?

"Yes. No. I don't know." Erik sighs again and presses his lips to Charles' throat. "I love you."

"I know you do," Charles says. "I love you too."

"It's not that I don't want to marry you," Erik continues. 

"I didn't think for a moment it was," Charles says. He rubs his thumb against the jut of Erik's hip.

"My life's not a disaster. It wasn't a disaster. I mean, it was, before you, but marrying you isn't going to make it a disaster again," Erik says.

"You do tend to ramble post-coitally," Charles says, and Erik adjusts himself, sits up to look Charles in the eye. His expression is grave.

"I'm serious," he says. "I don't want you to think--" He raises a hand to cup Charles' cheek, and Charles quickly covers it with his own.

"I don't, darling," he assures Erik. "I don't. I never would. It's frightening. _I'm_ frightened. I've been frightened every day since the first time I met you and my stomach lurched and my heart fluttered and I couldn't look anywhere else in the room." He offers Erik a half-smile, which Erik returns, dragging his fingers gently against Charles cheek in a short caress. "I'm always frightened. That something will happen to you, that you'll be hurt or killed or somehow taken away from me. That something will happen to me and you'll lose me before either of us is ready." There's a spike of fierce affection and determination and fear that Charles thinks comes from the deepest parts of Erik. 

He can tell, though, as he squeezes Erik's fingers, that death is only the beginning of what scares him.

"That you'll get bored or too angry or too frustrated or too tired of dealing with me," Charles continues, more quietly. "That I'll grow into a person you don't like. That you'll grow into a person that I don't like. That we'll change and grow apart. That our 'forever' will be abbreviated for reasons other than death."

Erik still holds his gaze, even though Charles can feel how badly he wants to flinch away from that truth.

"It's more than that," Erik says. "It's...it's trust and it's--I can't hide anymore. I can't pretend that I'm hiding. I can't pretend that I belong wholly to myself. Because I haven't--not for a long time. But until today, it was easy to act like I did. To act like I don't need anyone, like nothing can hurt me. It was a thing between us--that weakness, that knowledge. After today, I'll be wearing it for everyone to see."

Charles wants to tell him that he's always worn it for everyone to see. That his face, when he looks at Charles, is different. That strangers will think about how clearly Erik loves him when he see the way he gazes at Charles. That friends have noted how much Erik has changed, how much better he's become.

He doesn't know how to put that into words, though, how to share it without Erik picking it apart and skewing his words, how to make Erik see that those things aren't just further weakness.

"It's not--it can hurt you, it's true," Charles finally says. "But it's not about proclaiming your weaknesses, Erik. It's not about admitting you can be hurt. The world already knows that. You already wear that, not as a ring, maybe, but in the way you hold yourself. In your priorities and your affection. Today is about becoming something bigger than yourself. It's about showing the world you're more than that--that _we're_ more than that, together. Because you're not alone anymore. I have strengths to balance out your weaknesses and you have strengths to balance out mine, and that's marriage, isn't it? That's what we're doing. We're showing the world that we're better together than we are separately. That alone we may be weak, but together, we're unstoppable."

He believes it. He's always believed it. Raven's always said they bring out the worst in each other, but Charles rather thinks they bring out the best in each other. They argue and shout sometimes, they debate politics and literature and news and philosophy and science incessantly. They hardly ever agree. But through it all, they've been inseparable since they day they met. Erik makes Charles a better person, makes him work for his opinions and viewpoints, makes him strive to be the sort of person worthy of Erik's respect. At the same time, Erik accepts him and who he is and what he believes and what he can do and holds Charles up on the days when he's too tired of life to keep up his usual affable facade. He likes to think he does the same for Erik. He likes to think that's what relationships, good relationships, can do.

Still, in the indeterminate stretch of time as Erik digests his words, still staring at him, Charles has to fight to hold onto that feeling. There's always the slim chance that he's entirely off-base, that his perception of their relationship has been wrong all this time, that six months of planning and a year of engagement has been pointless because, at the end of the day, they don't really want the same thing after all.

And then Erik smiles at him and Charles' whole being is flooded with relief.

He should have known better. Erik hasn't let him down yet.

"You do have quite a few weaknesses," Erik says gravely, but he's still smiling. "I suppose it's my job to cancel them out."

Charles exhales with a short chuckle.

"You would take that tack," he says. "But if it must be someone's job to neutralize my faults, I wouldn't want it to be anyone else."

Erik kisses Charles, rolling his eyes, but somewhere between the first brush of their lips and the last, something changes. When Erik pulls away, his eyes are kinder, softer. Charles can feel the words swirling around his head, dancing at the tip of his tongue, but he doesn't say anything. He waits for Erik to sort it out himself, to put it into sentences, to say it out loud.

"You make me so much better," he finally says. "You always have. And I used to wonder what you got out of it--what could I possibly give you that was anything like all that you've given me? You saved me. You convinced me I could be a whole person, that I could be worth more for who I am than for what I can do. I can never repay that."

"Darling, you have," Charles insists. "A hundred, thousand times over. You helped me rediscover myself. You reminded me that there's more to life that observing the world around me. You taught me that I didn't have to be so careful and confined. You give me so much, every day, and I just--I want so badly for you to continue tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, for as long as we're both alive."

"Good," Erik says. His voice wavers uncharacteristically, his eyes misty. "Because if it's alright, I'd like to go outside and marry you."

It's Charles who leans forward for the kiss this time, and they lose endless seconds to it. The desperation of before is absent--the kiss itself is almost chaste--but Charles thinks he's never been so happy. It's difficult to pull away, even though he knows they have to--they're already running late.

"We should get dressed," he says softly. "Our wedding is supposed to start any second now."

"Well, I wouldn't want to keep anyone waiting," Erik says, and gently, slowly climbs off of Charles' lap and retrieves their clothes from the counter. They dress quickly, or as quickly as they can manage their suits and ties, but it's still not quickly enough. Erik is still working on his buttons when Charles feels someone approaching.

"Moira is looking for us," he warns. "She's displeased."

"What else is new?" Erik says, but he redoubles his efforts on his buttons and then quickly knots his tie. Charles gets a bit distracted watching the fabric wind around Erik's fingers--Erik's hands are top of the list of things that regularly derail Charles' entire thought process--and starts a little at the sharp knock on the door.

"Are you in there, you asshole?" Moira calls through the door. "It's too hot to get cold feet--the guests might actually kill you if you tell them the wedding's off." 

Erik leans over and straightens Charles' tie as Charles calls out, "You can come in, Moira!"

A moment later, the door swings open on Moira looking frustrated and then immediately suspicious.

"You're both in here?" she asks, raising her eyebrows. "Were you having sex in the bathroom twenty minutes before your wedding?"

"Honestly, Moira, does that really sound like us?" Charles asks, schooling his face into his most innocent of expressions.

"Yes," Moira says. "Ugh, seriously? It's probably filthy in here."

"I think it smells strongly enough of bleach that we should be okay," Charles says. "I mean, hypothetically, if we were to engage in such behavior."

Leaning back against the sink, jacket slung over his arm, Erik snorts.

"You're unbelievable," Moira says. "We're twenty minutes behind schedule, the guests are wilting, and we don't have time for you two--who aren't even supposed to see each other before the altar, I might add--to literally fuck off. It's about a zillion degrees outside and people want to get this over with. You're the genius who wanted to have an outdoor ceremony in July."

"I tried to talk him out of it," Erik says and Charles glares at him, the traitor.

"It was either have it in July or wait until next May, and the gardens are so lovely," Charles says. He can feel Erik's disdainful look and chooses to ignore it.

"Whatever," Moira says. "Get out here and let's get the show on the road. Your sister's going to go apoplectic and the guests are going to revolt momentarily."

"We'll be right out," Charles says, shooting Moira out of the bathroom. "Go on, then. Give us just a moment longer."

"Just a minute," Moira says. "Then let's get out there and get you two married so we can move onto the drinking."

"Hear, hear," Charles says, and the door swings shut behind her. He looks at it for a moment, then turns his gaze back to Erik.

"Ready?" he asks.

"I am," Erik says. He smoothes Charles' hair again, but it's nothing more than a flimsy excuse to touch Charles, to ground himself. Charles finds he doesn't mind serving that purpose.

"This was a bit fun though, yeah?" Charles says. "Strangers meeting in a hotel bathroom. We should try it again sometime. But maybe somewhere with a bed. Cable repairman and lonely bachelor."

Erik laughs.

"Maybe," he says. "But for a while, I think I'd just like to get used to having sex with my husband."

Charles knows his mouth is curving into a ridiculously soppy smile. He can't help it and he sees no reason to stop it.

"Yeah?" he asks.

"Yeah," Erik says. He raises a hand to propel the door open without looking away from Charles, his own smile just as sentimental. "How about we go get started on that?"

"I can think of nothing I'd like more," Charles says truthfully, and leads the way out of the bathroom and out towards the garden to get married.


End file.
